7 Heuristic Laws of Online User Experience

Follow the laws of User Experience Design (UX), and you can make a good product great. Let’s understand these laws and how to apply them to your products.

Aesthetic-Usability Effect: The aesthetic-usability effect is the tendency of the user to perceive attractive products as more usable. People tend to believe that things that look better will work better — even if they aren’t actually more effective or efficient.

Fitts’s Law: The time to reach a target on screen is a function of the distance to it and the size of the target. Basically, the distance to the target should be short and the size of a button or /link should be big enough to click on it. It helps the user to take quick action.

Goal-Gradient Effect: The tendency to reach a goal increases with proximity to it. This law is used a lot for showing delivery journeys in e-commerce (Amazon), food apps, & Ed-Tech. When the user sees their progress on a scale/graph/bar, it motivates them to reach their goal.

Hick’s Law: The time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices. Our brains are not comfortable with making many critical decisions at once. Divide complex tasks into smaller parts, and use progressive onboarding to decrease the cognitive load

Jakob’s Law: Users spend most of their time on other sites. So users will expect your site or app to work the same way as the other sites they use. If not of the same standard, it will stand out - and not in a good way.

Familiarity helps to strengthen already existing mental models. Tinder is the most used dating app and users are familiar with it. So, Bumble uses Jakob's law and follows the right-swipe method - same as Tinder.

Miller’s Law: The average person can only keep 7 (plus or minus 2) items in their working memory. Content on screens can feel heavy to consume if there’s a lot. So keep it economical. Organize content into chunks to let users process, understand, and memorize easily.

Parkinson’s Law: Tasks expand to fill the time available. Keep the time required for users to complete tasks to a minimum. For example, the Autofill details option helps people finish tasks quickly while filling out forms/at checkouts.

Final Note: Digital products evoke emotions within users. Designers cannot control user perceptions and responses. But they can design products that look good and feel good. Application of User Experience laws will help you design better products.